


It's Just Textbook Stuff.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Access To Education, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hermione rolls her own magical curriculum, POV Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 18:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: When she is eleven years old, Hermione Granger is expelled from the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry. It's not the end of the world.





	It's Just Textbook Stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Speeding Cars by Imogen Heap.

1.

When she is eleven years old, Hermione Granger is expelled from the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry. She's not the only one who'd broken the rules, but one of the other ones had been the Boy Who Lived and the other one was a pureblood, so of the three of them, Hermione's naturally the one who got made an example of. She's the disposable one, after all.

They snap her wand. They confiscate her books. They send her home.

Her parents aren't sure what to make of it all. There had been promises made when the wizards had first come to their house to tell them about Hogwarts. The Grangers were told what their expectations should be. Hermione's letters had matched some of those expectations, until they, abruptly, didn't.

Hermione was good enough, but she wasn't _good_ enough. The wizarding world didn't need her. She was just another muggleborn. They knew she needed them more than they needed her, and they were drowning in muggleborns. Why not sacrifice one of them to keep the peace? It'll keep the Board happy, after all.

Hermione wishes her anger took a shape she could recognize. If she'd decided that since the wizarding world didn't want her, then _fine_ , she didn't want them, she didn't need them. Or maybe instead she would focus on what had been stolen from her and act out and break their laws and justify all of their opinions and impressions of her. See, they would say, we were right to throw her out. She didn't belong.

It takes Hermione a few months to find another way. She can still get into Diagon Alley. She can still exchange money for galleons. She can still go and buy herself another wand. She can still go and buy more books. They had no right to steal her wand from her. They had no right to steal her books from her. But she can buy more. She can replace them. She can read as many books as she'd like. She can teach herself whatever she wants. She's still a witch, after all. She just has to make sure she only does magic in specific places. There are home-school laws, and while Hermione could never get her home certified as one, there are small schools off of Diagon Alley that might let Hermione use their facilities during school breaks, even though they won't admit her.

When the wizards had first come, they'd told her and her parents that it could be dangerous for her and her surroundings if she didn't go to school to learn to control her magic. But Hermione supposes that stops mattering when you get expelled. It may never have been true at all. It was probably just things they said. The wizarding world doesn't have a law to make anyone teach her anything. There's no school required to take her in. The wizarding world would be happy to shut the door in her face and never let her back in.

So they'd lied to her. Fine. Hermione's old enough to understand how things work. She's old enough, too, to try to get around them.

She sends out a few letters, but none of the European schools take muggleborns who have been expelled from Hogwarts. And even if they would, Hermione's parents, who had trusted the wizarding world, who had thought they were sending Hermione to a place that would value her as they valued her, tell her that they won't let her go back to a wizarding school full-time. Hermione understands that. She'll manage with just learning it in her spare time.

And so there aren't schools who will take her, but she has her books, and there are tutors who will take her for a week or two during the summer and breaks to help her with her practicals. Hermione's always been bright. She can manage just with that. She'll make sure of it.

It's slow-going. Teaching herself was never going to be as good as learning it at school. But Hermione gets to pick her own subjects and she gets to set her own pace. She can do some of the subjects at home without modifications, but she's concerned about trying Potions and Transfiguration without an expert adult around in case of mishaps. But history comes out of books, and she can learn the theory aspects of every other class whenever she pleases. It's not as bad as it could be.

She can't convince herself that she's getting a better education than she would be at Hogwarts, but she's getting enough of one, and that's what matters. 

 

2.

Hermione had been told that she can't do magic at home. That she's not allowed. That there's an underage sorcery act to prevent it.

But she's stubborn; she's willing to take the risk and deal with the magical authorities if they come after her. She's willing to have that fight. She wasn't able to win when she was thrown out of Hogwarts, but she's more settled at home. She's _at home_ when she's at home. She knows she belongs. The wizarding world had kept her off-balance, maybe on purpose, maybe by accident, but it doesn't matter. She wasn't secure there. She felt like she had to prove that she belonged. She felt like she had to prove they were right to give her a place.

And then they'd thrown her out anyway. 

They hadn't wanted her, but she's still a witch. They hadn't wanted her, but they've got her anyway. And she has a right to learn about magic. They can't stop her from doing accidental magic, why should they try to stop her from doing purposeful magic? They don't own magic. They might own formal magical education, they might throw her out of school, they might break her wand, but they can't stop her from using what's already inside of her.

And so she does what she always does when she needs ammunition for her arguments. She researches it.

The underage sorcery act, she eventually decides, is a law, nothing more. It can't be something that's automatically, magically, enforced. It can't be something in her wand. Her wand has no way of knowing if she's being supervised or even where she is, if she's at home or at school. The wand doesn't even know how old she is. There might, she supposes, be spells in places like Diagon Alley that can check how old someone is and can be triggered if someone underage is doing magic, but why should there be? Nearly everyone in Diagon Alley is supervised by an adult. And there are no spells like that on Hermione's house. Maybe someone like Dumbledore is powerful enough to cast a spell like that over the whole country, but why would he do that just to catch some kids misbehaving? And why would it be set to monitor _during_ the school year, when most kids are in school? The only ones who aren't at school are home-schooled or are like Hermione. There's no way anyone would do that. It's a pure waste of time. And people like Dumbledore don't think Hermione matters. Why would he care to try to catch her doing magic? If he cared that she did magic correctly, he'd have kept her in school.

And even in the summer, Hermione doesn't think it would make sense for anyone to try to monitor everywhere. And even if they did try, Hogwarts has summer homework. No one would cast a spell that elaborate just to catch some kids doing their homework, even if it could catch some kids doing things they shouldn't be doing. There'd be too many false positives. Who'd want to keep track of all that? No one would ever bother. Even if it did exist, it can't be monitoring all spells that are cast. It's got to be looking for certain kinds of spells. And it's still probably not real. Hermione doesn't know the wizarding population of Britain, but it's probably high enough, with enough spells being cast, that no one could ever think to try to keep track of it all.

It's got to just be a law that's policed by the magical police, the magic can't enforce itself. It's got to be a story to scare the kids who never bothered to research this in the first place. Hermione's spent her life hearing things that aren't true but are meant to scare kids into behaving the way adults want them to. Hermione likes following rules. She doesn't like following stupid rules. If it doesn't make sense, then it can't be that important. Those aren't rules worth following.

And if it really were that important that kids didn't do unapproved magic, they'd confiscate your wand when you're not at school. But they don't do that. Hogwarts students take their wands everywhere they go. The only reason Hogwarts broke Hermione's wand was to make her scared of them. To make her think that the only path to magic is through Hogwarts. To make her think that they controlled her. But they don't. They're just a school. But they wanted her scared of further repercussions, even though Hogwarts lost all power to enforce repercussions on her when they expelled her. They did it to make a point. They did it because they thought she was too stupid to know she could go buy another one. They did it because they didn't know her at all.

And they don't want to stop their own students from doing magic. They just want to scare them into compliance. Because if unapproved underage magic was really, really, important, they'd find a way to build it into the wands itself. They'd absolutely make sure it couldn't happen.

But how's a wand supposed to know what's approved and unapproved magic? It can't. Hermione's not even sure what approved and unapproved magic is, and she has the power of reasoning, which her wand, as a piece of wood, does not. Hogwarts: A History made it seem like any magic was okay as long as it was being taught within the school walls. It couldn't be the spells themselves. It had to be the circumstances. And how would the wand alert the Ministry? Hermione's wand needs her hand on it to work. She needs to cast a spell for anything to happen. And if they could cast spells to alert the Ministry, why would they need owls?

And they wouldn't need to make a law if they could just make it impossible for people to do. So they can't prevent it, not magically. They have to do it through psychology.

And maybe that kind of magic can't ever be that strong, not and still be a legal spell. The strongest magic Hermione's encountered outside of school is the muggle-repelling spells around Diagon Alley. But those aren't very strong. Hermione's parents have gone with her every time she's gone to Diagon Alley and they tell her that it feels like walking into a strong wind while something in their brain tells them to turn back. It's mind-magic, but it's still not strong enough to actually repel them from Diagon Alley. It's a whisper, not a compulsion. And that's on Diagon Alley, where they would put the strongest repelling spells outside of Hogwarts, and those repelling spells aren't even enough to keep Hermione's parents out. 

So if it's anything, it's got to be a ward, something really strong and covering the whole country. Maybe, Hermione wonders, it has something to do with how Hogwarts finds muggleborns. The wizards who had come to tell them about Hogwarts, they'd mentioned accidental magic. So that had been noticed. Someone had somehow noticed something. Maybe there really are wards all over the country that notice magic. Or maybe it's all in what people see. Maybe someone saw something who passed it along to someone else and that's how Hermione got her name down for Hogwarts.

But if there was that kind of ward, maybe they wouldn't tell anyone? But they tell everyone about underage sorcery. They warn everyone about what would happen if you break the rules. Is that just a lie? Or do they really have a way of knowing that Hermione Granger, age 11, is still practicing magic at home?

But it's not in any of the books Hermione's read, and she'd done a lot of preparatory reading for Hogwarts. She's done even more since then. She'd taken advantage of Hogwarts's library and since she's gotten home, she's bought three years worth of the Hogwarts curriculum.

It could be a secret, but why would it be a secret they tell everyone about? Is it so people don't try to get around it? Is it so people don't try to _break_ it? Spells can be broken. Spells can be out-thought. And spells like that would have to be monitored. Is there someone in the Ministry who has to look at this spell every day and write down accidental magic and purposeful magic?

And if there is, how does that person know when the magic comes from someone who is old enough to do it? How does that person know when the magic isn't being supervised?

And how do they know the spell isn't already broken? How much time does the Ministry spend on this? How much do they _care_?

It's still the school year. They shouldn't care at all.

But it leads to even more questions. Hermione thinks she'll focus her research into muggle-repelling spells. She spends the summer at the magical branch of the local library trying to track down how muggle-repelling spells work. How does magic know who's a muggle and who isn't? The books talk uncomfortably about some kind of magical aura, about strength in magic, about how squibs must have some kind of magic since those spells don't work on them.

Squibs don't have magic, Hermione reads over and over again, and yet the muggle-repelling spells don't work on them.

Magic doesn't know who has magic.

So there isn't a spell that monitors how strong your magic is and that's what makes you a witch instead of a muggle. The spells can't see that at all. If they were going to put that in anywhere, it should be in muggle-repelling spells. And so, Hermione assumes, there's nothing that can be put into a wand to notice how strong your magic is and once you get to a certain magical strength, that corresponds to an age, and so you're allowed to do magic by yourself. If it were that simple, the books wouldn't be so confused about how muggle-repelling spells work.

The books, Hermione realizes, don't even seem clear on what the difference is between a muggle and a squib. But the magic works on one of them but not the other.

Hermione reads the books backwards and forwards and realizes that no one has any idea how these spells work, only that they do work.

And that's weird, Hermione thinks. Wizards don't know how magic works. But they should! If they use it, shouldn't they know how and why it works? Otherwise it's just throwing around words and waving a wand and trusting something to happen.

It's all deeply confusing and definitely needs more research. But her months of research make it sound like Hermione's in no danger of being caught violating the underage sorcery act. And if they do catch her, she's got some questions about _how_. That alone would be worth triggering their system.

Hermione'll risk it.

 

3.

Hermione wasn't at Hogwarts long enough to make any real long-lasting friendships. Harry had sent two letters, Ron had sent one. She doesn't have an owl at home, and replies through the post office always take so long. Correspondence with the magical world had petered out in less than two months.

She sets up a subscription to the Daily Prophet, though. Her parents don't like it, they worry about her trying to connect herself so much to a world that has already rejected her. The magic is in her and so it's only natural for her to want to learn it, but reading the news is something rather different. Hermione doesn't read the paper every day, but her parents do, and they start to wonder what kind of world they'd sent their daughter into. They start to wonder if it was maybe a bit of luck that they got her back so fast. It's possible, they murmur to each other, that they might not have gotten her back at all.

When Hermione would have been starting her fourth year, Death Eaters attack the Quidditch World Cup. Hermione wasn't a fan of Quidditch, but she knows about Death Eaters. She knows what the Dark Mark means. She knows what happened the last time that was thrown around. 

She thinks, it's probably going to escalate from here. 

She's right.

When Hermione would have been finishing her fourth year, there's a death at Hogwarts. Hermione doesn't remember ever meeting Cedric Diggory. He was older than her and she'd been there for such a short time. She'd never known him. The papers are scathing about Harry Potter, but Hermione remembers him. She trusts him. She hasn't heard from him in years, but she still believes him. If he says it was Voldemort, she believes him.

Hermione's parents are glad she isn't at Hogwarts. Hermione's parents regret having sent her there in the first place. Their genius daughter can teach herself. There's no need to enter into that world. There's no need to lose their daughter to that world.

Hermione reads between the lines of the newspaper. She subscribes to two other papers. She starts listening to magical radio. She needs to know what's happening. She needs to know what's going to happen.

Her parents don't want to go into the magical world. But that won't stop the magical world from coming to them.

Hermione starts making plans.

 

4.

Hermione is sixteen when she decides that they have to leave England. It isn't the first time she'd considered it, but when she makes the decision, it's almost a relief. Things might get better. They might not get better. Either way, her parents like Australia and Hermione would be interested in a new start. She hadn't made friends easily as a child, but it's been even harder since Hogwarts. She has to keep up both sides of her studies. She doesn't get marks on the magical side of things, but that makes it even more important that she does it well. There's no consequences if she slacks on it; the only one disappointed would be herself. And so that makes it even more important that she keeps up to standard with her self-study. There's no one external to do it for her. She has to be good enough by herself.

But she can't slack on her real homework either. And she doesn't know what to tell the girls at school. There are a lot of them who'd love the idea of being a witch. But the reality of being a witch is lonely. It's studying even after homework is done. It's practicing what she can. It's stealing time here and there over summers and school breaks. It's knowing that the wizarding world tried to get rid of her. It's knowing that the wizarding world thinks she's useless. It's reading the papers and reading books about Voldemort and knowing that a lot of the wizarding world wants her _dead_.

And so Australia sounds like a lovely idea.

Before their flight to Sydney, Hermione writes a letter to Harry, letting him know that she's leaving. She doesn't know if he still remembers her, but it's only the polite thing to do. She doesn't tell him where they're going, just that they're leaving for hopefully-safer shores. She goes to Diagon Alley one last time and sends the letter through owl post to make sure that he gets it. He might not remember her. He might not be worried about her. But they'd been friends, if only for a little while, and Hermione's never had very many friends. It's the least she can do to tell him not to worry about her. She's certainly worried about him and about everyone in Hogwarts. But she can't be worried enough about them to not do anything to save her family.

This might be her fight. She's a witch, after all, and she's muggleborn. This might be her fight. Hogwarts threw her out, yes, but there wasn't an entrance exam to the magical world. Hermione's a part of it whether she wants to be or not, whether it wants her to be or not. But... this isn't her fight.

For one, she barely knows _how_ to fight. She's read all the theory books on Defense Against Dark Arts, but it's never been her primary interest and it was never her priority during the precious hours she had with tutors. Her parents enrolled her in self-defense courses, but that's hardly a match for Voldemort. This might be Hermione's fight, but she's not sure how she'd fight it.

Hermione might have a responsibility to the wizarding world, but she absolutely has a responsibility toward her parents. She's the one who got them into this. If families of muggleborns are in danger, then Hermione put them in danger by being a witch. The very least she can do is protect them. And that's more important than trying to protect the wizarding world, and other muggleborns, from Voldemort. Her family loves her. Her family accepts her. Her family might not always understand her, but they try. And _they've_ never thrown her out for breaking rules.

So they go to Australia and Hermione isn't going to regret it. She's not.

 

5.

It takes them a few months in Sydney to settle in enough for Hermione to go looking for more magical tutors. She has enough practice by now in explaining what happened and, anyway, now she can blame Voldemort. Her muggle education is excellent. Her magical education is spotty, stronger in books than in practice, but Hermione has always loved books more than she's loved people. She can explain that away, too.

She wants to learn everything. She's always wanted to learn everything. But she knows how to prioritize. Back home, she could only do Potions with a tutor; a lot of apothecaries wouldn't sell ingredients to someone her age. Herbology needs greenhouses and more of a garden than Hermione's family had. Hermione's strongest in Charms, which don't need anything other than a wand, and in Arithmancy, which only needs paper. But her real strength is in magical history and magical theory. 

If she were going to pursue structured magical education in the future, she should focus on her existing strengths. If this is more of a lark, like her parents always think it is, then there's no harm in trying to be well-rounded. There's no harm in finding tutors for the other subjects. Sometimes knowledge itself can be the goal, separate from any other consideration. That's what's driven Hermione since she was eleven years old. Knowledge for its own sake, not for any gain. Because magic is worth knowing. Because magic is inside her. Because knowing more about magic means knowing more about herself.

Her parents never made her choose between being a witch and being anything else. They never sat her down and said, you could have a normal career or you could be a professional witch. Being a professional witch isn't something that's ever occurred to them. It's a hobby. It's something that puts them in danger. It's not a way to support a family or pay the rent. They don't think this is anything Hermione can do professionally, they've never had any expectations of that at all. Other girls in Hermione's class were in drama club or choir or debate. As far as her parents were concerned, Hermione's extra-curricular activity was being a witch. It's never been anything more to them than that.

But when Hermione thinks about what she's going to do for a career, she keeps thinking about the bookstores in Diagon Alley. The staff there had gotten to know her. They'd taught her to shrink and lighten her bags so she could carry around as many books as she'd wanted. The stores had been places of hope and light, a way to still keep learning even though all the school doors were closed to her. She thinks about the magical librarians, who had only ever looked twice at her books in order to recommend other ones she might like. She thinks about the tutors who she'd seen for two or three weeks at a time, while their other students were elsewhere, who had found time for Hermione when no other teachers would.

She thinks about grabbing little pieces of magical education here and there, taking what she could get and bringing it home with her. She thinks about how being a witch probably isn't something you should learn from books, but it's something that Hermione mostly _has_. Her interactions with the wizarding world after age eleven were in little havens, taken piece-meal, and forced by circumstances into something that would never pass for even a facsimile of a fully-rounded education.

Hermione doesn't know everything that a properly-educated sixteen year old witch should know. She probably doesn't even know half of it. But what she does know, she realizes, is valuable. She's a witch who grew up a muggle. She doesn't use magic the way other witches do, like it's a part of her world. Hermione had to make it a part of her world, she had to slip it in when she could, between her normal coursework, within her muggle life. And that's valuable. And Hermione, she thinks now, can't be alone. She can't be the only one this happened to. She can't be the only one.

And she owes it to the other ones to help them.

And so the day after she finishes school, she walks into Sydney's largest magical bookstore. She goes up to the front. 

She asks, "are you hiring?"

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1017830.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/180258127525/its-just-textbook-stuff-4370-words-by-lanna)


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